


On Dover Beach

by lorannah



Category: History Boys (2006)
Genre: M/M, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-20
Updated: 2010-12-20
Packaged: 2017-10-13 20:03:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,322
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/141242
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lorannah/pseuds/lorannah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cathedrals crumble into the sea. Sometimes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	On Dover Beach

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sophieisgod](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sophieisgod/gifts).



> Massive thanks to starseverywhere for an excellent beta. The poem used throughout this is the beautiful Dover Beach by Matthew Arnold, I have mangled it more than a little so those who don't know it should seek it out.

_The sea is calm to-night.  
The tide is full, the moon lies fair  
Upon the straits; on the French coast the light  
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand;  
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay._

 __

 __

Scripps hasn’t decided yet if it’s a bad thing that years under Hector’s tutelage meant random scraps of poetry had the habit of bursting into his conscious at every opportunity. Then again, given that he and Irwin had dragged them all down to Dover on a ‘school trip’, it was hardly surprising that Dover Beach would be ebbing in and out of his mind tonight.

It was a full moon, heavy and low in the sky still, illuminating the arched cliffs above him and the grey pebbles beneath him. It reminds him of cathedrals. Even the green mossy ledges look like stained glass windows.

“All are but parts of one stupendous whole, whose body Nature is, and God the soul,” he mutters to himself. Alexander Pope.

Sometimes he thinks they’re all diseased, education setting in like a fever.

And, there in the water, is Dakin, swimming. He turns as Scripps watches him, as if he can feel him, though maybe it’s just that he always expects to be looked at. As he walks towards him, rising out of the waves, his boxers clinging to him, another quote comes to mind, a gobbet:- ‘Can it be fancied that deity ever vindictively, made in his image a manikin merely to madden it?’

Dakin looks like a statue - pale and beautiful and lithe. A statue for his cathedral. Something to be worshipped. It was a horrible thought, the cult of Dakin.

“You not braving the roaring raging wild beast?” Dakin asks, grabbing his t-shirt and rubbing it through his hair and across his chest. Gathering the worst of the water before dropping it and himself down next to Scripps. “So what have you been doing?”

It was a leading question. Dakin looking for admiration.

“Thinking. Poetry. God.” Scripps tells him, not able to muster much conviction.

Dakin doesn’t even need to respond. He’d seen Scripps watching him. Instead he just offers him a raised eyebrow and a quirk of his lips. With a groan, Scripps lays back, head pillowed on his arms, glaring at the sky.  Apart from the soft waves, they’re silent.

He is almost drifting off when Dakin speaks again.

“Teach me to pray.”

 __

 __

 _The Sea of Faith  
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore  
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled._

 __

 __

Scripps cracks one disbelieving eye open, to find Dakin leaning over him, looking down at him.

“Everyone knows how to pray,” he tells him.

“Well maybe I want to make an art of it. Think of Hector. What matters is the learning.”

“Think of Hector? Well, if you’re going to pray, that’s out for a start.”

“Come on,” Dakin tells him, shoving him on the arm. With a yawn, Scripps finally opens his eyes properly, propping himself up on his elbows. Though that puts Dakin too close.

“Alright. Repeat after me. Our father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name-”

“Our father?” Dakin interrupts him in disgust.

“What were you expecting?”

“I was expecting something a bit more complicated. Poetical.”

Scripps runs an assessing eye over him. “With the _worst_ sinners I think it’s best to start with the basics.”

It earnt him a grin at least. “God knows where you’d have to start with Posner.”

“Next to you, Posner’s an innocent.”

 “What? With all that lusting after men’s flesh?”

As he says it, Dakin stretches, back arching and one hand running along the back of his neck, displaying the stretch of his chest, the angles of his shoulders. It was all planned, a carefully considered tactic, a declaration of war but that didn’t change how it made Scripps’ heart quicken. The erratic beating of lust in his veins.

He closes his eyes again, stilling his breathing, hoping the illusion of relaxation will become real. That it will wash away whatever else lingered in his mind.

This may only be a cathedral of his own imagination, but that doesn’t make the deepening of his sin any less real.

 __

 __

 _But now I only hear  
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,  
Retreating, to the breath  
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear  
And naked shingles of the world._

 __

 __

“Give us this day our daily bread,” Dakin dutifully repeats after him, though with his eyes closed, Scripps can only imagine the expression accompanying the tone. And mostly he is trying to avoid the imagining part.

“And forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.”

“And forgive us our trespasses...” As he begins to repeat the words, Scripps feels the brush of Dakin’s hand against his neck, his thumb tracing down the side, fingers cupping around the back of it, holding him there. His eyes fly open to find Dakin so close now, he is all he can see. “...as we forgive those who trespass against us.”

For a moment he is frozen, torn between fear and longing as Dakin leans in to kiss him. Then he knocks his hand aside, pushing him away. “Get off.”

“Oh come on,” Dakin groans, “You must have known why I dragged you down here. Snuck you out.”

“I presumed it was because you didn’t think Irwin would come.”

Dakin rocks back on his knees, looking at him for a moment and he can see his tongue running along the inside of his cheek. Then Dakin grins.

“You don’t like Irwin much.”

“I think he’s a twat.”

They sit in silence, letting the moment sink down between them, Scripps trying to calm the blood racing through his body, staring at a pebble beside him. Cracked through its centre. Flawed. When the ache has eased a little, he risks looking back upwards, looking at Dakin, bathed in moonlight. It is like being opened up again. And it must have shown.

With a grin, Dakin moves forward again, and straddling one of his legs he takes Scripps’ face in his hands, he tries to pull backwards but Dakin holds him there, and leaning into him, kisses his cheek. It would have been soft and chaste, if it wasn’t for the way his body was pressed against Scripps’ jumper.

“Don’t forget the prayer,” he says, lips curving upwards, still pressed against his cheek, “I need to learn.”

It is a moment before Scripps can find his voice, can risk speaking, knowing that he shouldn’t. Knowing that this, if nothing else, was blasphemy, but he still does it.

“Lead us not into temptation,” he says as Dakin presses kisses along his neck and it’s whispered back to him, his lips brushing against Scripps’ ear.

“But deliver us from evil,” he can barely get the words out. “For... For...”

Dakin has slid one hand up under his jumper and he cannot stop the groan that escapes him. His mind is like a flag caught in the wind, twisting and tearing itself. He can barely think.

“For...” he tried again. “For the world, which seems to lie before us like a land of dreams.”

Dakin pulls the jumper over his head, throwing it aside and the cold and wind bites against his skin for a moment until Dakin pressing their bodies together, pushes him to the ground  and then he feels as if he will burn. For now and forever.

“So various,” he manages between desperate breaths. “So beautiful. So new.”

Dakin laughs softly against his neck and then pulls away to look at Scripps. “That’s not a prayer. It’s Arnold.”

 __

 __

 _Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,  
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain._

 __

 __

 __As easily as that the world rushes back to him, as if he remembers who he is and what he can and can’t do. Should and shouldn’t. He can feel the pebbles beneath them as Dakin lifts his arm to kiss it - the inside of his forearm, then his wrist, then the palm of his hand - can feel the way the pebbles hurt and scratch.

Scripps pushes against Dakin hard, trying to force him away, though he has no leverage and cannot move him far.

“I’m not going to do this.”

“What? You can’t pretend you don’t want it. Not now.” Dakin’s anger is clear, he doesn’t even bother to hide it.

“That’s not the point. You should have brought Posner, if this is what you wanted.”

“I don’t want Posner.”

“You don’t want me either. I’m just a substitute for Irwin.”

Dakin’s laugh this time is harsh. “For fuck’s sake.”

He grabs Scripps’ wrist again and after a moment’s struggle forces it down to the thin cotton of his pants, pressing Scripps’ hand against his hardening penis. “Does that feel like I don’t want you?” He asks through gritted teeth and they both freeze. It is as if a line they hadn’t even known existed has been passed.

Dakin releases his wrist, though Scripps’ finds he can still not move. Still caught. Slowly, not breaking his gaze, Dakin unzips his jeans, slipping his hand inside and carefully wraps his fingers around Scripps’ cock.

Then he kisses him. The first time, full on his lips. Dakin still tastes of salt water. It is a bruising sort of kiss, designed to leave a mark and Scripps wonders how far that mark will sink.

 __

 __

 _And we are here as on a darkling plain  
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,  
Where ignorant armies clash by night._

 __

 __

  
As Dakin slips his tongue inside his mouth, Scripps hand falls away, sinking deep into the pebbles, grasping them hard, until they bite into his palms, drawing blood, knowing that he has to stop this and knowing that he won’t.

In the end it is Dakin who pulls away first, though only slightly, just enough so he can move his arm, running his hand up and down his cock, smooth and confident. Scripps’ has to bite down on his lip, to stop from moaning. He won’t last long, they both know it.

Moments are never infinite.

He reaches up impulsively, twisting his fingers into Dakin’s hair and pulling him closer for another kiss and then he comes into his hand. For a second they’re just resting there together, breathing heavily, almost in time but not quite. Scripps lips pressed against Dakin’s hairline, he can see stars above them

Then Dakin laughs, not maliciously but it’s like a fracture, a sign that the moment is over. He rolls off him with a grunt.

“That wasn’t so bad,” it is a moment before Scripps realises Dakin is mostly talking to himself. “I mean I could do that again... or something more.”

He has already pulled on his trousers and was now working the still damp t-shirt over his head. His face lit with achievement and excitement and that part of him that is always thinking about what he is going to do next. Scripps has seen him like this before – in science experiments and plays, even playing football. He’s watched him for years, waiting for that look. It is the way he looks when he says something Irwin likes.

“You remind me of Irwin, you know.”

“Do I fuck,” Scripps pushes himself up, his back already feeling sore and reaches for his jumper.

“You do,” Dakin says watching as he gingerly pulls it back over his head. “You’re the only two people I ever have to work to impress. And you’re probably the only one, other than him, who doesn’t believe all the crap he spouts. Even Hector only pretends he doesn’t think Irwin’s right, that’s why he hates him.”

“Hector doesn’t hate Irwin.”

It’s funny how conversations, no matter what happens, always swing backwards.

“You coming?”

Scripps looks at Dakin for a moment, because it is a bigger question than he knows. He is still himself – untouched, unscarred and unchanged. But then it was only Scripps crushed between him and the hard stones.

“No I’ll stay longer.”

“Thinking about poetry and God? They’ll never go together properly.”

Scripps doesn’t answer, it isn’t a debate he wants to have, not now. The place of God or the place of poetry – the passion and the conflict. Instead he listens to the crunch of Dakin’s hurried departing footsteps.

He aches. It is beyond the cold or the sting of his cuts. It is an ache so fundamental to him that most days he scarcely notices it, unless Posner is there reflecting it back to him, like a broken mirror.

Sometimes he wonders if Posner knows.

Now though, he doesn’t need Posner. He has lost the layers of argument and friendship and comradeship, with which he hides himself – as if he is a scab torn loose, bloody and bare. And he aches.

Feeling the first sting of tears he presses his hand against his eyes. Crying would make this real and he will not do that. Instead he curls around himself, blocking the world out, hiding his proto-cathedral from view.

He wants to pray, but can do that even less. The words are stolen. Tainted. He can’t yet ask for forgiveness, because if Dakin comes again, he will follow him without thought. And because one hand is still wrapped around a handful of dirt and blood and pebbles, holding them like a memory.

So instead he waits – waits for the cold to settle in to his bones and deaden his feelings. Waits for his mind to rebuild the pretence of himself. Waits until the waves lap at the toes of his shoes, sending him away. Flinging him back.

 __

 __

 _Listen! you hear the grating roar  
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,  
At their return, up the high strand,  
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,  
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring  
The eternal note of sadness in._   
_  
_

__

**Author's Note:**

> I dearly wanted this to have a happier ending, it was planned and everything, but Dakin is a prat. Even in muse form. Sorry.


End file.
